Understanding Private Equity. Private Equity Investments in European Union

The paper deals with Private Equity investments in Europe. The aim of this work is to define Private Equity investments and analyse Private Equity market in Europe. The introduction contains European definitions of Private Equity capital and data were obtained from EVCA-European Private Equity & Venture Capital Association. In the analytical part, we focused on development and the current situation of Private Equity investments in European Union. In this paper, we can see the impact of the crisis development of investments. Analysis showed that average investment size have felt by half but the number supported companies have slightly increased.